Tulip

A tulip is a bulbous plant in the genus Tulipa, comprising 109 species^[1] with showy flowers, in the family Liliaceae.^[2] The species native range includes southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia from Anatolia and Iran in the west to northeast of China. The centre of diversity of the genus is in the Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains and the steppes of Kazakhstan. A number of species and many hybrid cultivars are grown in gardens, used as pot plants or as fresh cut flowers. Most cultivars of tulip are derived from Tulipa gesneriana.

Contents 1 Description 2 Origin of the name 3 Cultivation 3.1 Propagation 3.2 Introduction to Western Europe 3.3 Introduction to The United States 4 Diseases 5 Classification 5.1 Selected species 6 Gallery 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

Description

The species are perennials from bulbs, the tunicate bulbs often produced on the ends of stolons and covered with hairless to variously hairy papery coverings. The species include short low-growing plants to tall upright plants, growing from 10 to 70 centimeters (4–27 in) tall. They can even grow in the cold and snowy winter. Plants typically have 2 to 6 leaves, with some species having up to 12 leaves. The foliage attached to the stem is strap-shaped, waxy-coated, usually light to medium green and alternately arranged. The blades are somewhat fleshy and linear to oblong in shape. The large flowers are produced on scapes or subscapose stems normally lacking bracts. The stems have no leaves to a few leaves, with large species having some leaves and smaller species have none. Typically species have one flower per stem but a few species have up to four flowers. The colourful and attractive cup shaped flowers typically have three petals and three sepals, which are most often termed tepals because they are nearly identical. The six petaloid tepals are often marked near the bases with darker markings. The flowers have six basifixed, distinct stamens with filaments shorter than the tepals and the stigmas are districtly 3-lobed. The ovaries are superior with three chambers. The 3 angled fruits are leathery textured capsules, ellipsoid to subglobose in shape, containing numerous flat disc-shaped seeds in two rows per locule.^[3] The flat, light to dark brown seeds are arranged in two rows per chamber and have very thin seed coats and endosperm that does not normally fill the entire seed coat.^[4]

Origin of the name

Although tulips are associated with The Netherlands, commercial cultivation of the flower began in the Ottoman Empire. The tulip, or lale (from Persian لاله, lâleh) as it is also called in Iran and Turkey, is a flower indigenous to a vast area encompassing parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. The word tulip, which earlier appeared in English in forms such as tulipa or tulipant, entered the language by way of French tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulīpa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend ("muslin" or "gauze"), and is ultimately derived from the Persian language dulband ("turban").

Cultivation

Tulips are indigenous to mountainous areas with temperate climates and need a period of cool dormancy. They do best in climates with long cool springs and early summers, but are often grown as spring blooming annual plantings in warmer areas of the world. The bulbs are typically planted in late summer and fall, normally from 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 in.) deep, depending on the type planted, in well-drained soils. In parts of the world that do not have long cool springs and early summers, the bulbs are often planted up to 12 inches deep; this provides some protection from the heat of summer and tends to force the plants to regenerate one large bulb each year instead of many smaller non-blooming ones. This can extend the usefulness of the plants in warmer areas a few years but not stave off the degradation in bulb size and eventual death of the plants.

Propagation

Tulips can be propagated through offsets, seeds or micropropagation.^[5] Offsets and Tissue Culture methods are means of asexual propagation, they are used to produce genetic clones of the parent plant, which maintains cultivar integrity. Seed raised plants show greater variation, and seeds are most often used to propagate species and subspecies or are used for the creation of new hybrids. Many tulip species can cross pollinate with each other; when wild tulip populations overlap with other species or subspecies, they often hybridize and have populations of mixed plants. Most tulip cultivars are complex hybrids and sterile; those plants that do produce seeds most often have offspring dissimilar to the parents.

Tulip growers using offsets to produce salable plants need a year or more of growth before plants are large enough to flower; tulips grown from seeds often need five to eight years of growth before plants are flowering size. Commercial growers harvest the bulbs in late summer and grade them into sizes; bulbs large enough to flower are sorted and sold, while smaller bulbs are sorted into sizes and replanted. Holland is the main producer of commercially sold plants, producing as many as 3 billion bulbs annually. ^[6]

Introduction to Western Europe

It is unclear who first brought the tulip to northwest Europe. The most widely accepted story is that of Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq, Ambassador of Ferdinand I to Suleyman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire in 1554. He remarked in a letter that he saw "an abundance of flowers everywhere; Narcissus, hyacinths and those in Turkish called Lale, much to our astonishment because it was almost midwinter, a season unfriendly to flowers" (see Busbecq, qtd. in Blunt, 7). It gained much popularity and was seen as a sign of abundance and indulgence in the Ottoman Empire. The era during which the black Ottoman Empire was wealthiest is called the Tulip era or Lale Devri in Turkish. In classic and modern Persian literature, special attention has been given to these beautiful flowers and in recent times tulips have featured in the poems of Simin Behbahani. However, the tulip was a topic for Persian poets as far back as the thirteenth century. Musharrifu'd-din Saadi (poet) in Gulistan described a visionary garden where 'The murmur of a cool stream / bird song, ripe fruit in plenty / bright multicoloured tulips and fragrant roses...' resulted in a paradise on earth. ^[7]

In 1559, an account by Conrad Gessner described tulips flowering in Augsburg, Bavaria in the garden of Councillor Herwart. Due to the nature of the tulip's growing cycle, the bulbs are generally removed from the ground in June and they must be replanted by September to endure the winter. Busbecq's account of the supposed first sighting of tulips by a European is likely spurious. While possible, it is doubtful that Busbecq could successfully have had the tulip bulbs removed, shipped and replanted between his first sighting of them in March 1558 and Gessner's description the following year.

Carolus Clusius planted tulips in the Imperial Botanical Gardens of Vienna in 1573 and later at the Leiden University's newly established Hortus Botanicus, where he was appointed director. There he planted some of his tulip bulbs late in 1593, and 1594 has become the official date for the tulip's first flowering in the Netherlands -- despite reports of the flowers being cultivated in private gardens in Antwerp and Amsterdam two or three decades earlier. It was in Leiden that the seeds of the Tulip mania and of a vast tulip industry were generated ^[8]

Another oft-quoted account of the origin of tupis is the one of Lopo Vaz de Sampayo, governor of the Portuguese possessions in India. When he returned to Portugal in disgrace after usurping his position from the rightful governor, Sampayo supposedly took tulip bulbs with him from Sri Lanka. This tale too, however, does not hold up to scrutiny because tulips do not occur in Sri Lanka and the island itself is far from the route Sampayo's ships should have taken.

Regardless of how the flower originally arrived in Europe, its popularity soared quickly. Charles de L'Ecluse (Clusius) is largely responsible for the spread of tulip bulbs in the final years of the sixteenth century. He was the author of the first major work on tulips, completed in 1592. Clusius had already begun to note and remark upon the variations in colour that made the tulip so admired and his admiration of them quickly spread to others. While occupying a chair in the medical faculty of the University of Leiden, Clusius planted both a teaching garden and his own private plot with tulip bulbs. In 1596 and 1598, Clusius suffered thefts from his garden, with over a hundred bulbs stolen in a single raid.

Between 1634 and 1637, the early enthusiasm for the new flowers triggered a speculative frenzy now known as the tulip mania and tulip bulbs were then considered a form of currency. The ceramic tulipiere was devised for the display of cut flowers stem by stem - bouquets in vases of any type of flowers were rare until the 19th century, despite such vases, usually prominently including tulips, being standard in Dutch still-life painting. The Netherlands are still associated with tulips and the term 'Dutch tulips' is often used for the cultivated forms. Tulip Festivals are held in the Netherlands, Spalding (England) and in North America every May, including the Tulip Time festival, Holland, Michigan, the Skagit Valley Festival (Washington), the Tulip Festival in May in Orange City and Pella, Iowa, and the three week annual Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa, Canada. Tulips are now also popular in Australia and several festivals are held during September and October in the Southern Hemisphere's spring. The world's largest permanent display of tulips, although open to the public only seasonally, is in Keukenhof in the Netherlands.

Introduction to The United States

It is believed the first tulips in the nation appeared near Spring Pond in Lynn and Salem, Ma of the Fay Estate. In 1847 till 1865, a historic land owner, Richard Sullivan Fay, Esq., one of Lynn's noblest men, eminent agriculturist, merchant and manufacturer, occupied the land of 500 acres located partly in Lynn of the current Fay Estate, and partly in present day Salem where Camp Lion of Lynn and Wal-Mart are located. The estate also extended to Danvers Road. Mr. Fay imported several trees and plants from all parts of the world, and filled the empty meadows of the Fay Estate. People once toured the Arboretum Estate of exotic plantings.^[9]

Diseases

Botrytis tulipae is a major fungal disease affecting tulips, causing cell death leading to rotten plants.^[10] Other pathogens include Anthracnose, bacterial soft rot, blight caused by Sclerotium rolfsii, bulb nematodes, other rots including blue molds, black molds and mushy rot.^[11]

Historically variegated varieties admired during the Dutch tulipomania gained their delicately feathered patterns from an infection with Tulip Breaking potyvirus, the mosaic virus that was carried by the green peach aphids, Myzus persicae. Persicae were common in European gardens of the seventeenth century. While the virus produces fantastically colourful flowers, it also caused weakened plants that died slowly. Today the virus is almost eradicated from tulip growers' fields. Those Tulips affected by mosaic virus are called "Broken tulips"; they will occasionally revert to a plain or solid colouring, but still remain infected with the virus.

Some historical cultivars have had a striped, "feathered", "flamed", or variegated flower. While some modern varieties also display multicoloured patterns, this results from a natural change in the upper and lower layers of pigment in the tulip flower.

The Black Tulip is the title of a historical romance by Alexandre Dumas, père (1850), in which the city of Haarlem has a reward for the first grower who can produce a truly black tulip.

Classification

In horticulture, tulips are divided up into fifteen groups (Divisions) mostly based on flower morphology and plant size.^{[12] [13]}

• Div. 1: Single early - with cup-shaped single flowers, no larger than 8cm across (3 inches). They bloom early to mid season. Growing 15 to 45cm tall.
• Div. 2: Double early - with fully double flowers, bowl shaped to 8cm across. Plants typically grow from 30-40cm tall.
• Div. 3: Triumph - single, cup shaped flowers up to 6cm wide. Plants grow 35-60cm tall and bloom mid to late season.
• Div. 4: Darwin hybrid - single flowers are ovoid in shape and up to 8cm wide. Plants grow 50-70cm tall and bloom mid to late season. This group should not be confused with older Darwin tulips, which belong in the Single Late Group below.
• Div. 5: Single late - cup or goblet-shaded flowers up to 8cm wide, some plants produce multi-flowering stems. Plants grow 45-75cm tall and bloom late season.
• Div. 6: Lily-flowered
• Div. 7: Fringed (Crispa)
• Div. 8: Viridiflora
• Div. 9: Rembrandt
• Div. 10: Parrot
• Div. 11: Double late
• Div. 12: Kaufmanniana
• Div. 13: Fosteriana (Emperor)
• Div. 14: Griegii
• Div. 15: Species (Botanical)
• Div. 16: Multiflowering - not an official division, these tulips belong in the first 15 divisions but are often listed separately because they have multiple blooms per bulb.

They may also be classified by their flowering season: ^[14]

• Early flowering: Single Early Tulips, Double Early Tulips, Greigii Tulips, Kaufmanniana Tulips, Fosteriana Tulips, Species Tulips
• Mid-season flowering: Darwin Hybrid Tulips, Triumph Tulips, Parrot Tulips
• Late season flowering: Single Late Tulips, Double Late Tulips, Viridiflora Tulips, Lily-flowering Tulips, Fringed Tulips, Rembrandt Tulips

Selected species

Gallery

Cultivated Tulip at Floriade	Field of red tulips, Floriade, Canberra	Tulips are common in urban landscaping, as seen here in front of an office tower in Ottawa	A pink tulip of the Triumph cultivar - shown here in the color "Burns"
Pink tulips are popular in public gardens such as these taken at Bellingrath Gardens and Home in Theodore, AL.

See also

• Tulip period
• Tulip mania
• List of Tulip Varieties

References

Further reading

• Blunt, Wilfrid. Tulipomania
• Clusius, Carolus. A Treatise on Tulips
• Dash, Mike. Tulipomania
• Pavord, Anna. The Tulip
• Pollan, Michael. The Botany of Desire

External links

• Old Tulips
• Canadian National Capital Commission: The Gift of Tulips
• Greig's tulip (tulipa greigii) in its original habitat in Kazakhstan
• Lalades (Tulips of Chios: Tulipa praecox, Tulipa aegenensis, Tulipa clusiana, and Tulipa undulatifolia)
• elegant-tulip-bulbs.com: Information about 3700 tulip names
• Tulip photos
• Tulip species